Mario Bava - Kill, Baby, Kill (Operazione Paura) (1966) Filling in the gaps in my Bava knowledge and exploring the recent Arrow Video box-set of Bava, I come to one of his most famous and influential pictures with Kill, Baby, Kill. This is a particularly stupid title, sounds like a mid-sixties crazy hippie, biker chick film, more appropriate to Russ Meyer than to Bava. However the Italian title makes it sound like a Bond ripoff... In truth this film is a beautiful and unsettling Gothic Horror where people are mysteriously dying in a remote village. In come a doctor to perform autopsies and a detective, the detective moves out of scene pretty quickly and we get to follow the doctor as he tries to figure out the mystery of the deaths. In terms of plot it's good but not fascinating, what makes it stand out, however, is how Bava plays with preconceptions about characters. He upturns the contrasting images of the dark-haired witch and the virginal blonde girl, making the witch good and the girl evil. He creates a truly scary monster in Melissa Graps, a little undead girl with a white ball and a spooky laughter, but then he also shows us that she isn't really to blame for anything. As usual we also get Bava's trademark lighting with all the green and blue gel lights you can get, some amazing special effects and truly weird dream and dreamlike sequences, the dream of the doll and the chase of the doppleganger being particular highlights... and that Graps girl looking in through windows is still immensely creepy over 50 years later. (4/5) #killbabykill #movie #cinema #cinephile #film #mariobava #screenshot #operazionepaura #1970s #thriller #italianmovie #murder #horror #horrormovie #horrorfan #horrornerd #horrorgram #horrorgeek #horrorclub #horrorfans (at Lisbon, Portugal) https://www.instagram.com/p/B3gX3Dgleiv/?igshid=1l5tjuys94bra
